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Fingerprint security & keychains
Authored by: anandman on May 27, '03 01:58:56PM
I actually have a USB hard drive with a built-in fingerprint reader that works well with the Mac [BioSlimDisk]. This allows for even greater security than a normal USB drive. With this drive, once you get it setup, you have to use your fingerprint after you plug it in before it will mount. The nice thing about this particular one is that it doesn't require a special driver on the Mac.

As for storing the Keychain on the USB drive, I found that if you ever eject the drive, Mac OS X automatically saves the Keychain (from memory presumably) back into the default location in ~/Library/Keychains and uses that instead of the one on your USB drive. Annoying! I would really like the OS to complain if it can't find the Keychain file because the USB drive is missing.

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Fingerprint security & keychains
Authored by: tcurtin on May 27, '03 04:09:52PM
could you maybe get around this by making an alias or a ln -s link from the standard position to the USB drive? Hopefully, the OS would try to overwrite and wouldn't be able to. As a bonus, even if it started trying to use the standard location again, it would still point at the USB drive! I did something along these lines with my mail directory to store it on an encrypted disk image - works like a charm.

Btw, to make the link, enter the following from a terminal window:
ln -s /Volumes/USBDISKNAMEHERE /wherever/the/standard/file/location/is

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Fingerprint security & keychains
Authored by: anandman on May 30, '03 03:42:07AM

I tried creating a link as well and this resulted in the same thing whenever the Mac found that the link was broken because the USB drive was missing.

-anand



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Fingerprint security & keychains
Authored by: ocelot_wreak on May 27, '03 06:19:27PM

Can you tell us where you got one ([BioSlimDisk), as there don't appear to be any available at the regular geek-like electro-outlets, or anything retail on Google?

Curious minds want to know...

Regards,
ocelot wreak



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Fingerprint security & keychains
Authored by: davidnorton on May 27, '03 10:39:13PM
I did some looking (fingerprint security?! wow!) and found it on devdepot.com for $145 for 128MB. It's a cool product, but too expensive for me. The hint is sweet though -- I am going to buy an el-cheapo USB disk just for this reason when I buy a laptop.

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Fingerprint security & keychains
Authored by: 007 on Dec 31, '03 09:58:49AM

I think you got hosed....

I bought the latest biometric USB drive from
Imagenix.com
and got 128Mbytes for only 149.95
and the fingerprint sensor chip is 200x200 pixels (4 times the old technology).
Cheaper and better !!!



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